How To Fix Corrupted Audio File In Ffxiv

A couple of years ago, I bought a new gaming PC (a super duper MSI gaming desktop) after years of playing Final Fantasy XIV on Windows via bootcamp on my Mac. As expected, it was like playing an entirely different game, with better graphics, meliorate frame-rate, and no annoying reboot to Windows in between. However, what I didn't expect was to run into a trouble where FFXIV intermittently crashes on my fancy new designed-for-gaming PC.

This postal service is dedicated to the months I spent mutating and mostly ridding myself of the FFXIV errors and crashes on my Windows 10 PC. I'thousand going to start with the errors I experienced, the short, short version of the gear up that worked, but then get for the long story, considering I don't actually know if information technology'southward a combination of some other tweaks I did that fixed the error.

"A fatal DirectX error has occurred.(11000002)"

The error originally presented itself as a frequent

          A fatal DirectX fault has occurred.(11000002)

Also, is anyone else bothered by the lack of a space after the period in this error message?

"An unexpected error has occurred. Exiting Last FANTASY XIV."

After some initial tweaking (see longer story beneath) the crashes were sometimes the fatal DirectX error, and sometimes this much more helpful "An unexpected error has occurred." with a stack trace.

          An unexpected error has occurred. Exiting Terminal FANTASY 14. 2019-02-27_10:01  XAudio2_7.dll+34C29 XAudio2_7.dll+2FF91 XAudio2_7.dll+2B4B3 XAudio2_7.dll+2A917 ffxiv_dx11.exe+11E8A6E ffxiv_dx11.exe+11CC3AA ffxiv_dx11.exe+11D245C ffxiv_dx11.exe+11BCDFF

(Afterward a few months of this, the error was non unexpected!)

The short, brusk version: How I Finally Fixed the FFXIV Crashes

The concluding blast in the coffin on my FFXIV-crash safari was disabling sound/sound enhancements for my sound. We'll talk virtually how I got here in the long version, but hither's how to disable audio enhancements:

Open up the Windows 10 Sound properties. (How you go there depends on your Windows x setup. Right-click on the speaker icon in the lower right corner of your screen and select "Sounds". Or open up Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Manage Audio Devices. Or open up Control Console > System > Sound > click Sound Control Panel on the correct side.)
In the kickoff tab, "Playback", select the audio device yous use for FFXIV and click "Properties". If you don't know which audio device you use for FFXIV you lot can disable others to narrow it down, or right-click on each choice and click "Test" to see if it's the right output.
In the Properties window, select the "Enhancements" tab. Or if you don't have Enhancements, choose "Advanced".
From the Enhancements tab, check the checkbox "Disable all enhancements". Or if you lot're in the Avant-garde tab, uncheck "Enable audio enhancements".

Reference: What Is "Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation" and Why Is It Running on My PC? - Walter Glenn, How To Geek

July sixteen, 2021 Update: Even with this change, I would still go periodic "lock-up" on my PC, which sometimes would cause FFXIV to crash, and sometimes the game would just freeze for a moment and then come back. Since I use ACT, I started looking at it being the cause of these problems. There'due south a keen FFXIV ACT Plugin GitHub thread discussing just this kind of situation. I tried turning off two options in Deed:

In the ACT Options tab > Miscellaneous, I turned off "One time a infinitesimal, automatically save ACT's settings.
In the Act Options tab > Output Display > Text Export Settings, I turned off Export to Clipboard later on combat.

After doing this, the graphics freezes were dramatically reduced, merely not gone. I assume the clipboard copy is the actual good change hither, but since I'm not actively irresolute my Human activity settings often, there'due south no reason for me to auto-salvage the config constantly either.

August 4, 2021 Update: Later on tweaking the ACT options, the occasional graphics delay/freeze would still happen in FFXIV, and then I tried a few more things:

I changed mice and uninstalled my iCue mouse software. (I don't remember this made a difference, for the record.)
I snoozed Windows updates.

I had no graphics lag/freeze incidents until the day my Windows x update snooze expired. Oddly the freeze wasn't even when Windows checked for updates, but but somewhat randomly afterward that. I snoozed updates over again and graphics lag/freezes ceased once more.

Then now I am vetting the theory past using the advanced update options to do shorter snoozes of just a 24-hour interval, and observing behavior with the updates snoozed or not. I'm too manually checking for updates in the evenings so I don't miss any updates. If you try this yourself, be sure to occasionally check for updates and then re-snooze the auto updates.

The long version: Fixing FFXIV Crashes

Originally, I was getting intermittent (once an hour) "A fatal DirectX error has occurred.(11000002)" errors and FFXIV would crash to desktop. All of the searching I did online atomic number 82 to it being a video driver result (more on that later on) and the fix being to reinstall the video drivers. Doing that was not only a huge pain in the butt, information technology also didn't alter a thing!

During each crash, my sound would also get wonky for a second before the actual error dialog would announced. Given that I know FFXIV's long history of audio bug (ahem earlier Shadowbringers, don't modify your audio output unless you'd like to not have sound anymore, or how trying to use my AirPods over bluetooth would crusade my game to crash), and that DirectX also involves audio and non only video, I reinstalled my Realtek audio drivers, and changed my audio jack from the front end jack to the rear PC jack. After doing the sound adjustments, the 11000002 intermittently changed to the An unexpected mistake has occurred. Exiting Concluding FANTASY XIV. with the XAudio2_7.dll stack trace. To me, this felt like progress because it (to me) confirmed an audio-based event.

At this bespeak, the large matter to observe for me is that the problems occur somewhat randomly. Sometimes a transition/cut scene... sometimes just sitting idle in a city. Sometimes I got a total crash to desktop, sometimes the audio and video froze for a moment and and so everything came back.

I did a lot of uninstalling and reinstalling drivers at this point, and trying to notice older drivers, beta drivers, etc. None of information technology helped. I besides did a system refresh and re-setup my PC. Over again, in addition to being a pain in the butt, this didn't assistance. At this point I noticed a couple of things:

When I had Chrome open and alt+tabbed, I'd get the crash more frequently. (Not always.)
Windows 10 security update running in the groundwork would correlate to crashes occasionally. (Only again, non e'er.)
Smart tiles when I opened the windows x offset menu definitely contributed. I turned all of my smart tiles off and it helped reduce the frequency of the crashes a fiddling.
I disabled Cortana by using the group policy editor. I have no idea if this helped farther reduce the frequency of the crash at this betoken, but it certainly didn't get rid of them completely.

To me, this started feeling similar the kind of issues where FFXIV temporarily existence put into the background for other processes to do something (updates, lots of stuff running, something unknown and then far) was contributing to the problem. My speculation was something like the audio processing queue overflowing due to not existence able to procedure the audio quickly enough when other processes cut in. Again, pure speculation.

Now, I was always on the hunt for extraneous processing. Every time I logged in to play FFXIV I would:

Open Job Manager, go to the details tab, right click on the FFXIV process and set the priority to High. Practise non set the priority to Existent-time!
In Task Manager details tab still, right click and "End Process Tree" on extraneous junk that I knew was extraneous junk. Microsoft Edge being the notable ane in my mind.

This philharmonic of really tuning multitasking downwards while playing seemed to help continue the crash downward to once every couple hours. But information technology was notwithstanding irritating, and this PC should be good enough to handle doing many many things at once.

I was well trained to do this chore director dance for a few months, and and so I bought myself new monitor and speakers. In improver to beingness a swanky monitor with a bend (I feel so fancy), it likewise had a built in audio jack then I could run the sound via HDMI or Display Port, and and so plug the new speakers in to the monitor instead of to the PC rear audio jack.

I fix upward the monitor to run audio/video via Brandish Port, and audio to run through the monitor, and FFXIV crashed pretty much constantly.
I ready the monitor to run audio/video via HDMI, and audio to run through the monitor, and FFXIV crashed pretty much constantly.
I set the monitor to run via HDMI, and ran the audio back through the read port, and I was back in business with but a crash every few hours.

I indicate this out only as reinforcement to myself that this was an audio-based event.

Flash frontwards a couple more than months of tuning downwards the multitasking with Task Director, when I got irritable i day, and just sat watching Task Manager Processes tab with FFXIV alt tabbed out (background music running when in background) watching for a spike in something. (I sorted the list past descending CPU utilization to lookout for something to pop to the top of the listing.)

Finally, I saw something interesting: "Windows Sound Device Graph Isolation" spiked to the tiptop of the list. It had both things I wanted in a lead on the problem: sound and intermittent spiking!

A little Google Google and I ended upwards this article: What Is "Windows Sound Device Graph Isolation" and Why Is It Running on My PC? which explains that problem audio enhancements can crusade the Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation to accept abnormally high resource usage, and then goes on to detail how to disable audio enhancements. Once more, here are the instructions for disabling audio enhancements:

Open up the Windows x Sound backdrop. (How you get there depends on your Windows 10 setup. Right-click on the speaker icon in the lower right corner of your screen and select "Sounds". Or open Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Manage Audio Devices. Or open Control Panel > System > Sound > click Audio Command Panel on the right side.)
In the offset tab, "Playback", select the audio device you lot employ for FFXIV and click "Backdrop". If you lot don't know which sound device y'all utilize for FFXIV yous tin can disable others to narrow it down, or right-click on each choice and click "Test" to see if it'southward the correct output.
In the Properties window, select the "Enhancements" tab. Or if you don't have Enhancements, choose "Advanced".
From the Enhancements tab, cheque the checkbox "Disable all enhancements". Or if you're in the Advanced tab, uncheck "Enable audio enhancements".

I haven't had a single crash after disabling the enhancements. (Knock on every piece of wood in my firm...) I no longer have to elevate the process priority for FFXIV or close other processes in the Task Manager.

At this point, I should get do some more than things, like effort my display port or HDMI for audio, or see what enhancements I accept and endeavour to narrow down the trouble enhancement. Merely, I'm just happy to be playing crash-costless... fingers crossed.